>I don’t want a build up to this post – it’s such a sad Happy Birthday!

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So I’ll just go ahead and tell you that I fell sick on my birthday, which was on this Monday gone by. I hated it! A day before, which I had reserved to polish myself at a spa like you do brass before a party, I was lying in bed, trying to whisper to myself ‘All izz well, all is well’. Alas, it wasn’t. And by Sunday evening, I was running 102 degree Fahrenheit temperature. So instead of getting my eyebrows in shape, I was ensuring there were nice dark circles under my eyes to go with ’em bushy brows! And lest you think I can pop a Crocin and get on with life, let me remind you, dear reader, about my wonderful world of allergies that forbid me to enjoy the simple pleasures of life – like how you feel better after gulping a Crocin.

So to make the picture prettier, I was treated to cold sponging. Mum came over with medicine from her favourite homeopath. And it worked! It worked well enough for me to sit up in bed by midnight and cut my awesome cake, which actually I should have been cutting with all my family, over dinner at a fancy dinner place where we had booked a table for 15! But that plan had to be called off in the evening, when the fever showed no sign of letting up.

And D-day came with no pleasant surprises. The fever was gone, the phone was engaged the whole day long receiving birthday wishes, but that’s not the birthday you want to have! I told the Twitterati about my birthday and save for a few nice souls, no one noticed.I’d planned a lunch with my colleagues at a South Indian place nearby that I love, because Monday is a light day work-wise and we can step out for an hour or so without a problem. But that was not to be. I spent the afternoon recuperating in bed, bathed at 5pm because it was my birthday(!) and things began to look better after that. Family turned up (sisters, mothers, nieces and nephews), but would you believe it, no one got me a gift!

The problem with being such a stickler for your kind of stuff is that people totally skip the effort of even buying you anything and just hand you cash instead. Which is so, so boring! But Sis No 1 made up for it by gifting me a Radha-Krishan she’d painted herself, a huge-ish canvas that will find pride of place on a wall in my house soon. We topped off the day by stepping out for dinner with friends, where I could not eat anything because my stomach decided to give up on me just then! Oh yes, it was a fantastic birthday indeed!

But seriously, not as bad as I’m making it out to be. It could have been worse had the temp not gone down (god bless mom’s reliable homeopath!). But it could have been better too. Well, well, next time maybe.